Metro backed off plans to run separate trains for participants in the Aug. 12 “Unite the Right” white nationalists rally in the District after ATU 689 exposed them on Friday. Although Local 689 president Jackie Jeter said the transit workers' union is “proud to provide transit to everyone for the many events we have in D.C. including the March of Life, the Women’s March and Black Lives Matters,” she said that “We draw the line at giving special accommodation to hate groups and hate speech.” In a press release on Friday, the union noted that the vast majority of the union's membership "is people of color, the very people that the Ku Klux Klan and other white nationalist groups have killed, harassed and violated. The union has declared that it will not play a role in their special accommodation." Former U.S. attorney Tim Heaphy, who conducted an independent review of the 2017 Charlottesville protest, agreed. “Law enforcement has this professional obligation to protect speech, regardless of how hateful it is,” he told the Washington Post, “but transit workers don’t sign up for that.”
photo: Jeter (left) and ATU 689 members at April 2018 commemoration in Memphis of the 50th anniversary of the historic sanitation workers' strike, a key event in the Civil Rights Movement; photo from ATU 689 Facebook page
photo: Jeter (left) and ATU 689 members at April 2018 commemoration in Memphis of the 50th anniversary of the historic sanitation workers' strike, a key event in the Civil Rights Movement; photo from ATU 689 Facebook page